In a recent masterclass for our community of like-minded salespeople, two experts with deep knowledge of LinkedIn shared their tips on how to build a personal brand for sales success.
Maureen Kane is the founder of BrandIn Agency, a LinkedIn personal branding agency.
Dean Seddon is the CEO of Maverrik which teaches you how to master social selling.
Between them, our two experts have decades of experience using LinkedIn, and their insights provide a valuable deep dive into how creating a personal brand on LinkedIn can lead to sales success.
Read on for their five top tips on how to build a personal brand that generates sales success without compromising on your ethical values.
What exactly is a personal brand – and why should you want one?
At its core, personal branding is about helping people remember you, and then choose you. This is vital if you’re selling a product or service.
To build a personal brand, start with the principle of the one thing you want people to remember about you, and then thread this through everything you do.
Our experts maintain that three months of committed activity will generate results. This includes putting out great content and connecting with new people that fit with your ideal customer profile. As a result of this consistent activity, your credibility will grow, leading to a higher rate of inbound enquiries from interested buyers.
So read on to find out five ways to build your brand, why puppies can be important, and why we must avoid ‘Paris Hilton syndrome’…
1. Show up and be consistent
Personal brand building on LinkedIn takes commitment to writing posts and creating content. To see results, put the effort in.
Much of sales and business development is about maintaining consistent levels of activity and showing up in front of buyers as much as possible. Our experts advise posting content a couple of times a week. Mornings between 7am and 9am works well, as people are often browsing on their phones, which is also why Sunday can be a great time to post.
To help with scheduling, our experts recommend blocking out LinkedIn activity time, such as 45 minutes in the morning and another 45 minutes in the afternoon. Setting a specific time will also help with discipline and not wasting an entire day on a platform that can become a bit of a time drain!
The good news is that you will reap the benefits of this consistency, says Maureen, who reported a new client recently signed up with her after 14 years of following her posts!
“Posting keeps you in their eyesight. They’ll choose you if they’ve been following you and watching you, and the sales cycle will be quicker.”
2. Listen as well as talk
Of course, as with any conversation, we must listen as well as talk. In addition to creating original content, the key to a great LinkedIn personal brand strategy is connecting with others and commenting on or liking their posts. After a time doing this, then send a direct message if appropriate, to start a conversation.
“In the sales cycle, there are about 14 touchpoints from zero to meeting,” notes Dean.
“So knowing it’ll take a while, I’d first think about how I would break the ice, such as having a back-and-forth about something on their post. It’s what I call DM commenting – referencing their post in a message. This is just an icebreaker, with no sales outreach. You won’t convert in a day or week – it’s a longer journey.”
As part of this strategy, dedicated time must be set aside to go through messages and continue any conversations. Once interest has been generated, follow them up using your usual sales process, as you would a lead from any other source.
3. Balance the personal and the professional
Your story and your background are what makes you unique, so this needs to be a part of everything you do on the platform.
And because LinkedIn is at its heart a social media platform, make sure your personality is shining through in your posts. The conversational nature of the platform means that adverts for webinars, for example, get less engagement than posts with a personal touch or unique perspectives.
“Business can have your personal touch. You’re a salesperson because you have a personality, so use it,” says Maureen.
Many salespeople struggle with getting the right balance between the personal and the professional on LinkedIn, but there are effective methods of presenting yourself the right way.
A blocker for many is having the courage to put personal content on the platform. However, our experts advise that your personality is the differentiator and is what will attract your networks to your content.
If you do start giving your opinion, you may not appeal to everyone, but you’ll reach people who do agree with you and will in turn want to learn more about you and your business. And you don’t need to go to extremes – you can start small. For example, think about what’s going on in your business day that you can share a personal slant on.
4. Keep practising
Posting takes time to get right, and you won’t get better at it unless you’re doing it consistently. Dean describes it as a journey that can’t be short-circuited – to get good at posting you just have to keep doing it to find out what works and what doesn’t.
During the masterclass, our MD Corinne revealed that one of her most popular LinkedIn posts is a personal one of a picture of her and her new puppy. The experts both agreed that while this might seem like throwaway content, posts such as this are vital because these personal posts help the other, more on-brand ones get seen.
Confidence is key to LinkedIn. As salespeople, we’re often confident in talking about our product but not ourselves, so you need to train yourself to do it. And because LinkedIn has now taken the place of many face-to-face meetings, being confident on the platform is now a key part of your role.
“If you go to face-to-face sales meetings, you talk about everyday things in your life such as your cat or dog, or things you’re passionate about,” says Maureen.
“As LinkedIn is your platform to get in front of people for sales, be authentic — talk about things that relate to you and your job, not just the things you think you should be talking about. Talk about the things you’d bring up in a face-to-face conversation about your job.”
Dean agrees:
“If you met someone when networking, you wouldn’t just dive into a sales pitch straight away — you’d share little things. So those things you’d share in that icebreaking conversation are fair game for a post.”
5. Don’t get Paris Hilton syndrome
Be careful not to take your personal posts too far, however.
“Don’t get what I call Paris Hilton syndrome – where everyone knows who you are, but not why,” says Dean.
“Lots of people on LinkedIn share personal stuff so you know who they are but you couldn’t say what they do. This means they have no credibility, and they definitely don’t make any money!”
Key takeaways
To sum up, at a recent Ethical Sales Masterclass we explored the role personal branding can play in building better buyer relationships and increased visibility of your organisation.
Be consistent – commit to regular, purposeful content creation to enhance credibility and drive inbound inquiries.
Listen and engage – focus on meaningful engagement as a precursor to successful connections.
Harness the power of your uniqueness – create a balanced blend of personal and professional elements, showcasing your authenticity as the key differentiator.
Did you find these insights useful?
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